Freelance writer Lisa Greim recently modeled the kitchen in her 35-year-old Arvada home, above, saving by doing some of the work herself, compromising on some finishes and shopping aggressively for her appliances.

ARVADA, CO - AUGUST 20: The newly renovated kitchen of freelance writer Lisa Greim on Wednesday, August 20, 2014. Greim has been in her home for 18 years and just did a two-month-long renovation.

My 18-by-9-foot kitchen, in a 35-year-old suburban house, required no major demolition or structural work. It features flat-pack Ikea cabinets that I assembled, closeout appliances, Formica countertops and laminate flooring.

And it’s so pretty, so functional and so much better than what it replaced that I could sit right down in the middle of the fake acacia floor and weep.

What drives designers nuts, she says, are clients who make their wish lists with no idea of how much things cost — and then complain that her plan is too expensive.

There’s no shame in scaled-back designs or a modest budget, Morrisseau says. “None of us will think badly because it wasn’t what you wanted to spend; we all have the same choices to make ourselves. Our goal is to find something you like.”

Design magazines and renovation TV shows don’t help aspiring remodelers get a grip on reality, either.

The beautiful showroom kitchens you’ve seen in vendors’ catalogs or stores usually display comparison prices — $1,899 to $2,999 for a 10-by-10-foot Ikea kitchen, for example. But the fine print reveals that the price includes only the cabinets and associated hardware. Everything else is extra: countertops, appliances, lighting, flooring, tile work, sink and faucet, even the knobs and door handles.

While Ikea’s cabinets are a good value for the money, “it tricks people into thinking they can do a kitchen for $5,000,” says Lindsay Groté, an architect with The Design Couple in Denver, which offers an Ikea design service. “The average Ikea kitchen is more around $25,000.”

Other elements of a new kitchen’s final bill that people tend to forget:

Labor. Paying Ikea for delivery, assembly and installation adds 200 percent to the cabinet costs, Groté says. Finding contractors to work on your kitchen is a whole different challenge, and Groté notes that the cheapest bid may not be the best. “Sometimes, somebody will underbid a project just to get it, and make it up with change orders, or you may wind up hiring a second contractor who has to undo what the first guy did,” she says.

Structural changes. Taking down a wall to “open up” a space requires an engineering consultation ($650 to $1,000), Groté says. Support beams and headers can easily add $10,000 to $12,000. If you move a kitchen fixture, the pipes and wires have to move, too.

Permits and code requirements. Pulling city permits adds both cost ($550 for mine) and time to a job, but it gives a homeowner peace of mind that work was done to code and verified by an inspector. “I encourage people to spend the money to do it legally,” Wain says.

Surprises during demolition. Removing the dropped ceiling and soffits in my kitchen added 9 inches of cabinet height and 5 inches of headroom. But every wire leaving the electrical panel — for the whole house — had been stuffed into the soffit, and once the soffits were removed, the wiring was festooned across the kitchen space like party streamers. Fixing that cost about $500 of electrician time. Bushels of blown-in insulation added to the mess. We were just lucky there weren’t pipes or ductwork in there, too.

Service add-ons. If you’re installing a double oven or induction cooktop, your older home may need a 200-amp panel (about $2,000 installed) to handle the extra load. To switch from an electric range to gas, I would have paid about $500 for a short gas-line extension.

Money-saving strategies

Do as much of the work as you can. This requires an honest — and I really mean honest — assessment of your do-it-yourself skills. I built the cabinet boxes and drawers and scraped the texture off the ceilings. Losing Independence Day weekend to painting was worth the $2,000 savings.

Shop aggressively — for everything. Buying during one of Ikea’s three annual kitchen sales saved me 20 percent — about $1,200 — on cabinets, hardware, a farmhouse sink, faucet and range hood. If you choose a different cabinet provider, to ask them when their best sales are.

Shopping the appliance outlets and doing lots of online research saved me about 50 percent on new appliances. I spent about $5,000 total for a scratch-and-dent fridge; a closeout smoothtop convection range; a discontinued dishwasher; an Ikea range hood and a garbage disposal from Amazon. Sign up for ConsumerReports.org ($30/year) and download the smartphone app so you can look up prices while you’re in stores.

The appliance coup de grace: Finding the perfect microwave for $78 (I had estimated $200) and having the guy knock another $10 off because I bought the floor model.

Compromise. As labor costs started to come in, I had to rethink some design choices. Hardwood flooring was $12 per square foot installed; I got the laminate at a third the price. The lovely mosaic tile backsplash ($11/square foot) became white subway tile at a dollar a square foot with a 3-inch accent strip of mosaic.

I would have loved a quartz countertop (about $85 a square foot installed), but bought premium laminate ($21 a foot) instead. It not only looks great, but was much easier to fix than the quartz would have been when the fridge turned out to be a quarter-inch too wide for the space.

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